Northwestern University Jewish center vandalized

(JTA) — A Chabad House serving Northwestern University in suburban Chicago was vandalized.

Saturday’s attack came a day after President Obama revealed in a televised news conference that two packages containing remote-controlled bombs addressed to Jewish organizations in the Chicago area were intercepted on the way to the United States.

The large menorah in front of the Tannenbaum Chabad House, located a block from the university’s Evanston campus, was vandalized for just the second time since the Jewish center opened more than 20 years ago, the Daily Northwestern reported.

"I’ve been in this community for so long, and we’ve never had vandalism of this nature," Chabad director Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein told the student newspaper. "I was pretty saddened by it. I felt somewhat violated."

Evanston police have classified the incident as a hate crime, Klein told the newspaper.